


You Make My Head Hurt

by Painted_LadyBones



Series: Do You Know This Feeling? [1]
Category: Music RPF, Rock Music RPF, The Rolling Stones
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Care, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Glimmer Twins - Freeform, Growing Old Together, Happy Old Men, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Keith Being Charlie's Biggest Fan, Love, Old Friends, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Love, Platonic Relationships, long term friendship, multiple eras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29871888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painted_LadyBones/pseuds/Painted_LadyBones
Summary: When Charlie falls ill, Keith always comes to his rescue.(Part of a series of one shots about The Rolling Stones' relationships with each other, from a variety of perspectives and eras).
Relationships: Charlie Watts & Mick Jagger & Ronnie Wood & Keith Richards
Series: Do You Know This Feeling? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2205954
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	You Make My Head Hurt

**Author's Note:**

> “I always feel sorry for people like Charlie who have migraines.”-Keith Richards, Life (2010) 
> 
> “I don't sleep on tours, 'cause I got no one to sleep with. So I talk to people - and I draw.”-Charlie Watts, 1979

It starts as a pinch, just slightly on the left of his forehead, halfway through the concert. One minute he’s banging along the rhythm to “Monkey Man”, a half a second behind Keith and leading the rest of the troops along, and the next he can feel that telltale twinge. An hour, maybe ninety minutes, before it circles his entire head, gripping like a vice, making his sight flicker and his stomach heave violently. It will be a full blown migraine, and he’ll be worthless. 

Oh well, at least he’s done his normal pre-show routine, and only had a bit of coffee. Less to throw up, in a few hours. After all of these years, Charlie has a finely honed sense of humor about this little problem, a pretty ironic one for a drummer. Normally he would be the one giving other people migraines. 

Past the age where medicines, both preventative and reactive, are safe, and decades into the issue, it hardly phases him. Just keep pushing, ignore the pain, and try not to vomit all over Mick when you stand up to take a bow. That’s been his mantra for ages, and it still holds. 

◃◃◃

"Come on, Charlie, I know you ain’t asleep! It’ll be ages, yet, you’re always crap at that on the road.” 

Keith’s voice echoes, clear (cigarette crackled and booze frazzled, realistically) and loud through the nondescript white wooden door that opens into Charlie’s suite, reaching its occupant with an ease that he really despises at this second. Slumped on the floor, with his traitorous head tilted into the side of the mattress and his arms hugging his thin torso, he spares a moment to be grateful that they’re wealthy enough to be inhabiting the entire floor, and thus not waking up poor, innocent people with all of Keith’s ruckus. 

In the same moment, he considers yelling at his bandmate to “go the hell away” or perhaps even something less polite, but just the idea of opening his mouth, when his teeth are ground so hard together he thinks his skull might split clean in half from the pressure, makes him groan. 

“Charlie?! I’m coming in old man, so you’d better throw on a robe if you want to protect your precious modesty.” 

With all of the grace of a charging bull, or a rolling stone, Charlie’s door swings open and slams shut, the distinctive beat of bare feet on expensive carpet starting in his direction. His eyes remain firmly shut, hope against hope that not seeing the spinning room will stop him vomiting. Again. Even though there’s nothing left, and there was never much to begin with, his body will find a way. 

“Oh.” 

Charlie’s said it before, and he’ll say it again. Keith is frig all like his image, and little split seconds like this are all the proof he’ll ever need of it. The softness of the tone, the instant concern, the undeniable hint of worry and ‘I’ve got to do something to mend it.’ For all the heroin and antics, he’s still a stick thin 19 year old that loves Patrick O’Brian novels and gets nervous around pretty girls. 

“Alright, we’re gettin’ you on the bed and comfortable. This is worthless at fixing anything.” 

“Don’t you dare try and pick me up. You’ll throw your back, if you can even start it.” 

A plume of warm breath, cigarettes, aftershave, and a little wine, brushes against his ear, right before he feels two arms slide around his body. 

“Hate to break it to ya, Charl, but my Tele probably weighs more than you do.” 

“I’ll throw up on-” 

“You forget I raised four kids? And bloody Ronnie? A little vomit hardly scares me.” 

Before Charlie can register another objection, the muscles circling him tighten, and, with a half laughed huff against his neck, he can feel himself rising. Turned a little ways, shifted, and then gently laid onto the bed. If he weren’t so afraid of what opening his eyes would do, Charlie would like to see the manuver. Mostly to make sure Keith doesn’t kill himself, or the both of them. 

“Told ya it wouldn’t be a problem. Hang tight, I’ll get the rest.” 

A hand, calloused and gnarled, with the firm suggestion of metal on one of the fingers, ghosts across his forehead before the patter of feet retreats. 

In such a state, the passing of time is hardly something Charlie can account for with scientific precision. It could be minutes, or hours, before the steady breaths and murmured words return. Probably minutes. 

"Alright, I’m gonna get you over a bit to the side, and then we’ll have you settled in and knocked out before midnight.” 

Without further comment, the drummer feels a cool cloth come to rest against his head, and then his body being gently levered to the left, before the bed dips and something soft settles along his side, a familiar arm lacing under his back and settling him against a chest tilted upwards on readjusted pillows. 

“Moron.” 

“I didn’t see the point in worrying you.” 

“Stupid git. I knew you looked altogether the wrong shade after the show, shoulda just gone straight to your room.”

“Thought I was gonna lose my lunch all over Mick when we went to bow.”

Laughter rumbles through the chest he’s lying on, a pleasant vibration with well known and loved catches and starts. 

“That, I would pay to see.” 

Charlie can remember quite clearly the first time he had a migraine in front of Keith. It was a few months into the Stones, when he’d lost his job and moved into Mick, Keith, and Brian’s shared flat. Ridiculous household. Everyone had been out at points working on, or more likely playing at, various things, and he had been the first to return home. The prospect of a few quiet hours in their rooms had been heavenly, until he felt that pinching heaviness. 

Within an hour, Charlie was sprawled on the living room floor, thin fingers wrapped around the back of his head in a punishing grasp and pathetic moans drifting through the little flat. A bloody nose had happened at some point, leaving the rug a distinctly gory mess. Somewhere during his drifts in and out of full consciousness, Keith had arrived home with Mick. 

He recalled being unceremoniously flipped onto his back, and Keith’s panicked shout to Mick. “Hospital, he needs the hospital, now!” How he had grasped at his friend’s collar and shook his head, quietly, stiltedly explaining that this happened every few weeks and there was no solution, nothing any hospital could do. That he was sorry for the mess. Much of the rest of that night was a series of half remembered scenes, like the flickering of burnt up projector film, but he knew for sure that apologizing had pissed Keith right off, and that he and Mick had hauled him into the sole bed, and done their schoolboy best to care for him. 

“Why the hell didn’t you tell us about this to begin with?” 

Tempted as he was to point out that ‘this’ had begun with them almost 60 years ago, Charlie let that bit of the remark go. He was hardly in fighting shape, and the fingers drawing gentle patterns in his hair, attempting to soothe the brain tearing itself to little shreds, relax his aching mind and his tongue. 

“Everyone already knew.” 

“What?” 

“Mum, dad, Linda, they were all used to it. I suppose it never occurred. And I didn’t want to bother you all with it. Hadn’t been friends all that long, and it’s not a pretty thing to deal with.” 

“Maybe you’ve forgotten with the migraine, mate, but we’ve been friends for more than a couple months nowadays. Tell me, or Mick or Ronnie, when your brain has gone funny.” 

He’d been terrified, then, that an attack would happen in the middle of a performance. That the others in this strange, ragtag little family he’d found, would realize what a liability he was and boot him. As it were, the first attack must have loosened his tongue, because when he came fully back to himself the next morning, Keith and Mick had told him with not a glimmer of uncertainty in their voices that he was there to stay. Keith had shoplifted enough to end up in Pentonville in order to snag him, they intended to be stuck with him for life. 

“Yessir.” 

There was a pinch on the ear for that.

The arms shifted slightly, drawing his head closer down on a steady, flowing heartbeat, allowing him to ride that embracing rhythm right into darkness. 

◃◃◃

“We’re in bloody Minneapolis, I doubt he’s got that far off.” 

Raucous after show parties weren’t too much of a feature, nowadays, but Ronnie had still been eager for a sit down with Mick and Keith post-concert, once the biting nerves and stomach plummeting jitteriness wore off. Their singer he had found with ease in his suite 45 minutes before, but Keith was nowhere to be seen in his own or any of the others on their floor. Which left only Charlie’s. Neither of them had bothered to search there up to that point, knowing Charlie’s penchant for sleeplessness and wandering on tour. If anything, they had expected to find the perfectly turned out drummer sprawled across Keith’s couch, quietly sketching. 

“Charlie?” 

“Keith gave me the other of Charlie’s extra keys, just open it. They’re probably not in anyway.” 

“You sure?” 

“I don’t think we’ll be letting ourselves in on an orgy, or an opium den.” 

The lights were still on, and Ronnie was about to repeat his call when he saw a bare toe hanging off the edge of the huge, plush bed which took up most of the suite’s main room. Grasping Mick’s hand, he pulled the man along after him, shushing a question with a squeeze. 

“Look.” 

“Oh dear, how scandalous indeed.” 

“Have you got your mobile?” 

“Yes.” 

“Picture?” 

“Absolutely.”


End file.
